DAVID WHEELER: Mobile app Zite a site with insight

If you're not familiar with it, I highly recommend the mobile app Zite, particularly if you like to keep up with alternate sources of news and information. It assembles your own easy-to-read and navigate magazine. Just tell the app what (or who) you like to read, and it creates a personalized reading experience. You ca...

If you're not familiar with it, I highly recommend the mobile app Zite, particularly if you like to keep up with alternate sources of news and information.

Zite assembles your own easy-to-read and navigate magazine. Just tell the app what (or who) you like to read, and it creates a personalized reading experience. You can customize as you go by tagging articles you like so the app gets an idea of your tastes. The more you use it, the better it gets at predicting which articles and blog posts are likely of interest to you.

But there’s a catch to using Zite or any other “predictive technology”. You have to prepare yourself for some hard truths. Because Zite also adapts to what you actually read, not what you tell the app you like to read. And this can be a rude awakening at times. Kind of like a bathroom mirror in the morning.

I like to think of myself as a thoughtful reader, someone who takes the time to find credible and reliable sources of information and entertainment. But according to Zite, I also like simple info-graphics and celebrity Hollywood stories.

Same for Netflix. I like to think all I watch are quality dramas and smart documentaries. But if this were the case, why do slasher films and zombie flicks appear in my personalized recommendation list just as regularly?

The answer, of course, is because these are the movies I watch. Sure I watch some foreign films and period dramas. But as it turns out, I watch more B-list horror and action/adventure films. I also watch a lot of “dark violent dramas based on real life.”

Predictive technology does not possess the art of subtlety. It hits you in the face with your actual tastes, whether you’re ready for that or not. And this is only the beginning, as plenty of people see this kind of thing as the next step in computer evolution.

“How does a human infant evolve from a blob of incoherent needs into a person with thoughts and plans and a sense of self? In part, they do it by figuring out what they want — and, more importantly, what the people around them want. Discovering other people’s wants is fundamental to communication, language, and social bonds. Perhaps that means AI will grow out of a brilliantly-designed recommendation engine.”

Let’s think about this for a moment. Not only does today’s technology possess an ability to sell us stuff and teach us about ourselves, might it someday possess a sense of self?

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In 2011, IBM’s Watson, an artificially-intelligent computer system, competed against the two highest former winning contestants on the game show Jeopardy and “received” the first prize of $1 million. Impressive as this is, I don’t remember reading anything about Watson actually spending the money, which would indicate some kind of decision-making sentience. But maybe that will change someday.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll have dinner conversations with our iPhones or GPS software that argues with drivers over the shortest route home. I could go on and on with the possibilities but I need to end it here. I think my iPhone might be getting jealous at all the time I’ve spent writing this on my laptop.